The lunge closes the distance in a blink.
Move.
Quinn turns for the door, but the creature hits him before he can take more than a step. Its weight slams into his ribs and shoulder, claws tearing through him as they collide. The impact drives him sideways into the bookshelf.
Wood explodes behind him. Books spill in a heavy cascade. Something cracks near his ear.
Its fast, its way to damn fast.
The creature does not pause its assault.
One forelimb hooks forward, digits lengthening mid-motion, claws carving toward his face. Quinn jerks down and the talons gouge the wall instead, plaster and wood spraying into the air.
He scrambles on hands and knees, palms slipping over loose pages.
Get up. Get up. Get up. MOVE!!!
The creature lands where he had been a second before. Its spine ripples unnaturally as it pivots, head turning first, body following in a delayed wave.
The creature's focus is now entirely on Quinn as the key is out of play, its eyes never letting Quinn out of its sight.
I am done for.
It springs.
Quinn makes it two stumbling steps before something clamps around his calf. Claws bite deep and yank him off his feet. He slams down hard onto the floor, his ears ringing and vision blurred for a moment as the wind is knocked out of him.
No—
Pain streaks down his leg as the talons drag, opening him from calf to ankle. Warmth spills inside his boot briefly before it is torn off and slams into the wall.
He kicks blindly as he tries to pull his leg free from its grasp.
His heel connects with something soft. The creature's jaw snaps shut on empty air and the grip loosens just enough for him to wrench free.
He slips from the blood on the ground while trying to get up, he decides to roll away instead, wanting to make any ground he can.
His vision finally returns and the ringing stops as he sits up right, coughing as he tries to fix his breathing, standing as he does so.
The door. The door.
He doesn't even take a full step before the creature cuts him off.
Its eyes pulse and jaws clack open and shut as it moves low this time, somehow even faster than before. Quinn barely notices the shift in its shoulders—
—and then claws punch forward into his abdomen.
There is a heavy and intense pressure at first.
As though something has reached inside him and is playing with his insides.
Then heat.
Blinding, tearing heat.
No no no no—
The claws withdraw and something wet follows with them. Quinn folds instinctively, hands flying to his stomach. His fingers come away red.
"—ah" he looks down at his hands, his breathing intense
There is too much red. It pools in his hands before it pours between his knuckles, his shirt and pants are stained with it as it drips to the floor in thick, uneven beats.
This isn't good, I don't think I am making it out of this.
The creature rears back, fluid dangling from its mouth as it prepares to strike again.
Quinn stumbles sideways, shoulder colliding with the wall as he slumps against it for support. His vision pulses at the edges, black creeping inward.
Stay up, stay on your feet.
The creature charges.
He snatches the nearest thing — a chair — and hurls it. It shatters against the creature's chest, splintering uselessly.
Despite the chair the creature continues on, not slowing just changing course.
Quinn backs away, one hand clamped uselessly against his stomach as he takes a deep breath.
It's not stopping.
Something glints near the wreckage.
Metal.
The key.
Half-hidden beneath a fallen book, slick with a thin smear of blood.
The creature's head tilts slightly as its focus flickers to the key.
Quinn feels it now, something he did not feel before — a pull, subtle but undeniable, like a thread catching in his ribs and drawing him forward.
Why did it bring that, is it here for something.
The creature quickly refocuses and lunges again.
Quinn drops flat, claws rake across his back instead of his throat, tearing brutally. He cries out over the sound of his tearing flesh, the sound ragged.
He rolls away again, more blood covering the floor, as his vision flickers once again and his breathing hitches.
It's over.
The creature slams into him from the side, driving him across the floor. His wounded abdomen strikes the boards and the world fractures into white as the air is knocked out of his lungs.
I'm going to die.
His hand stretches blindly, for something, anything.
His fingertips brush iron as the creature rears back for another strike.
Quinn closes his fist.
The key presses into his palm.
The pull sharpens — not outward, but inward. Something in the room shifts.
The creature hesitates.
Not fear, resistance, as though the air between them has thickened.
Quinn drags himself backward, leaving a dark smear behind him as he wishes for a weapon, anything.
Stand. Stand up.
His other hand finds the broken shelf behind him; it searches for a moment before gripping tightly and forcing himself to his feet.
Everything in him screams in protest, blood coats him and his surroundings, it is like there is more blood on the ground then there is inside of him, he gets to his feet for a moment before his legs start shaking.
The creature lowers, spine lengthening, muscles aligning for another explosive lunge. Blood threads from the splits in its face.
It wants the key.
He tightens his grip around the key before it shifts into something different, like a sword grip which causes him to test it in his hand before the weight shifts and he sees the blade, not super long or short, it's the perfect length for this environment or so it seems.
Finally, a life line.
The ruined study feels smaller than ever — shelves collapsed, ink bleeding across the floor, pages plastered to blood-slick boards.
The creature growls.
Quinn braces against the wall, breath shuddering, vision narrowing as blood drips from his brow, a cut he hadn't noticed in the commotion.
Don't drop it.
The creature coils.
Don't fall.
And then it springs.